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Friday, August 17, 2007

While sitting at work all week, alternating between looking at posts on Craiglist, planning my upcoming trip and trying to spread out the small amount of work that needed to be done by me this week, a light bulb went on. Now is the perfect time to start my much ruminated upon blog. I have wanted to be a food writer for several years. However, I thoroughly enjoy the job that I have and for now am committed to it. Blogging about the food that I eat, experience and cook, the adventures that I have and the grog that I quaff will hopefully fulfill that desire and also be a great project to embark upon. Context and purpose for my vices, if you will.

I am leaving on my trip two weeks from today. In preparation, my friend Jan suggested I look at a website called The Universal Packing List. http://upl.codeq.info/ There you input the destination, date, predicted weather, potential activities, and various other details. UPL generates a list of both items to pack and chores that need to be done prior to leaving. My list for this trip was 90+ items.

Among the more obscure are the following:

Being that the highs will be 90 and lows about 70, I find advice to bring tights on the odd side. Where will I be wearing tights when it is 90 degrees and high humidity?

More entertaining I find is the advice to bring a fleece sweater. Fleece is advised in particular because it can double as a head wrap during cool evenings. I love the idea of myself walking around the fashionable Ginza district of Tokyo with a blue fleece sweater wrapped around my head.

Social Insurance. Is this insurance against being a social outcast? What is one insured against if they have a social insurance policy? Sounds suspiciously EU to me.

It's not so much the advice to bring a corkscrew that I find entertaining, but more the directions on how to use one. I throw my head back in laughter.

One item that has me flummoxed is item #13, Get Maps. The UPL suggests that I get any maps I might need at home. Here is the issue. Will the maps need to be in Japanese? I don't read Japanese. If I get the maps in English, will I know where I am going because when I get there everything will be in Japanese? Meaning characters, of course, as opposed to being translated in to the Latin alphabet. Interesting.